A Fool Looks Back

Rick Aristotle Munarriz, The Motley Fool
Updated

It's finally happening. Facebook is going public. The leading social-networking website filed to go public on Wednesday.

As investors probably imagined, Facebook is a ridiculously profitable company given its lean overhead and enviable model where the users are the ones creating the content. Facebook earned $1 billion on $3.7 billion in revenue last year. There are 845 million monthly active users.

Facebook will trade under the ticker symbol FB in a few weeks if everything goes according to plan. Then again, this is Wall Street. Nothing ever really goes as planned.

Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.

  • Dice Holdings (NYS: DHX) fell 17% on Thursday after offering up light guidance for 2012. The operator of career-specific websites did post strong fourth-quarter results, but investors are always worried about the future. Snake eyes?

  • Netflix (NAS: NFLX) took a breather after U.K. satellite television giant BSkyB announced that it will roll out a rival streaming video service. Maybe Netflix should've gone for an expansion market that would have given it a little more leg room. The BSkyB's the limit!

  • Walgreen (NYS: WAG) posted a 4.6% decline in comps for January. A weak flu season and a sharp drop in prescriptions are the culprits, so I guess the good news is that we're feeling better and getting medicated elsewhere.

  • Sirius XM Radio (NAS: SIRI) is staging a Bruce Springsteen show to celebrate 10 years of satellite radio. The Boss hasn't had a marketable hit in that time, but when life gives you a terrestrial-radio icon, you make satellite-radio lemonade.

  • Shuttefly (NAS: SFLY) came through with solid holiday-quarter results, but that snapshot wasn't enough to offset the ugly moving picture in the form of weak near-term guidance.

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

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At the time thisarticle was published Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended buying shares of Netflix. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors.Longtime Fool contributorRick Munarrizcalls them as he sees them. He owns shares of Netflix and is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.

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